“Delicate instruments of engagement” performative action in the Benois Wing - Events

“Delicate instruments of engagement” performative action in the Benois Wing

20 July 2017—21 July 2017

On 20 and 21 July from 2 p.m. till 6 p.m. “Delicate instruments of engagement”, ongoing performative action by Alexandra Pirici (Romania) will be shown in the Russian Museum, the Benois Wing.

A coproduction of Impulse Theater Festival (Cologne, Germany) and the FFT Düsseldorf (Germany), in collaboration with the Access Point Summer Arts Festival.
"Delicate Instruments of Engagement" is Romanian artist Alexandra Pirici's second work presented in St. Petersburg. Her performative interventions into the urban environment, "Soft Power", were an important event of 2014’s Manifesta10 where the performers interacted with the monuments of the city: alive and flexible human bodies contrasted monuments to Russian emperors.

In the ongoing performative action that opens the Access Point Festival Pirici interacts with the exhibits in the Russian Museum where five performers create their own ephemeral exhibition space. The artist joins images from political history and history of art: The images of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's execution are next to a Japanese commercial made by Joseph Beuys to raise money for his famous project "7000 Oaks". Modern media people will be part of this ongoing action, too. Statements issues by the First Ladies of the United States, Michelle Obama and Melania Trump, almost identical, interweave with one of Anna Akhmatova's poems. Natalia Goncharova's painting "The Cyclist" appears in the same line of images as the dying statement of Salvador Allende Gossens, President of Chile, or Anna Pavlova's "The Dying Swan".

"Delicate Instruments of Engagement" is a live exhibition, a subjective selection of images, events, speeches, memes, and pop culture legends. Through these images Pirici delivers her own comparative history of politics and art, which often cannot be separated from one another.

Facts:
1.) Alexandra Pirici became famous after her performance at the 55 Biennale in Venice (2013), where she represented Romania. Together with Manuel Pelmus she presented "The Immaterial Retrospective of the Venice biennale": a group of performers acted out the story of several previous exhibitions.
2.) Pirici's artistic practice combines the art of choreography with the techniques of media art and other branches of modern art. She performed at the Hebbel am Ufer theatre in Berlin, at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and has garnered the reputation of one of the young leaders of European performative art.
3.) Her "Signals" at the IX Berlin Biennale in 2016 was also very significant: performers wearing special costumes with reflective bits embodied Internet memes, giving immaterial and intangible images new material and physical existence. 4.) In June 2017 Pirici became a headliner of Skulptur Projekte Münster. She presented her performance in the Hall of Peace of the Historical City Hall of Münster, inspired by the Westphalia Peace treaty of 1648. It put an end to the Thirty Years' War in the Holy Roman Empire and cemented the sovereignty of European countries. Pirici's performance evidently resonated with the current situation in European Union.

Entrance is with the museum tickets.